What are the strengths and weaknesses of using GA for a project?

[Cleop]

I want to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of using GA so I can decide if its the best option for my project.

Following some of my own research and a discussion with @nelsonic, these are some of the following observations I've made about the strengths and weaknesses of using Google Analytics:

Strengths	Weaknesses
Free	An independent platform that admins must remember to review (separate from the other admin functionality of the product)
Page view data	Not built with an event-based / journeys / goal achievement focus
Good for pre-sign up flows	Can't store personal customer data e.g. email addresses
Can be customised more for events with Tag Manager	Not good for agile development such as cohort analysis, action based journeys
	Not so good at post sign up / logged in flows

I have the following further questions in follow up to our first discussion:

• We discussed GA not having good 'cohort analysis' tooling. I watched a couple of tutorials on its cohort analysis and wanted to know more about specifically what you think it lacks? (Not having done cohort analysis before and therefore not really knowing what to look for)
• The same goes for 'retention'
• Whilst GA is not built with events as the primary focus, it seems as though google tag manager can help resolve this issue. @nelsonic do you think that tag manager successfully helps capture events/ goal completion?
• Are there any other links/materials you could share to help deepen my research?

[nelsonic]

@Cleop I would recommend that you watch this lecture: "How to Measure Your Product" https://youtu.be/MABmQhOlmJA

That should give you some insight into "how to measure" and cohort analysis. Once you've watched it, please share your thoughts/learnings and any further "search" you conducted and resulting links you read while trying to understand the lecture. Thanks! ✨

[Cleop]

Thanks @nelsonic, a very good talk. These are my notes:

The basics

• Page views aren't helpful, it's about learning what people do on your app
• Simplicity is key, don't get drowned in data that doesn't mean anything to you. It will overwhelm/confuse/distract the team from what matters most.
• Focus on one core metric for 6 months (then review after 6 months to see if you feel it was the most useful metric to focus on)
• Focus/ iterate on the initial user experience
  • Do people understand my product? Is it easy to use?
  • If people aren't converting past step 1, then effort spent on steps 2,3,4 etc. is redundant.
  • Make that experience as simple and fast as possible with the fewest possible barriers to entry.
  • How? don't just measure page views for the landing page, see how many people go to another page from the landing page (this will indicate whether they're engaging)
  • also look at the speed of this action occurring (this will help you see whether people find the site easy to understand or whether people are confused).
  • Make a funnel for the initial experience for them to get started, at what step of the process are people dropping off?
  • A/B test the copy on the landing page to see if it's making it easy for people to understand your product
  • Test with real users, data won't tell you the causality of things as well as hearing straight from people sometimes
• Focus on 3 - 5 things but have one core metric.

  Digging deeper

• See if people complete actions
• Let users see/use the product before having to sign up
• Avoid email verification until spam etc. becomes an issue, implementing it from the start will severely dent sign ups
• Don't neglect retention metrics, without it you constantly have to find new users (more marketing etc work). It is commonly neglected. Look at not just 1 week but 30 day retention rates. Also look at daily active users, to see who is using your app day after day (data has shown this to have a tight correlation with churn rate).
• Think about revenue churn e.g. people buying drinks from 3rd party sites

The talk mentioned that Mixpanel was built trying to fill the gap that Google Analytics wasn't filling, however in terms of features I'm not sure that it highlighted that GA is not sufficient to achieve these goals. From a glance, GA appears to offer funnels and retention metrics, although I don't know how flexible / well they work. So I'm not sure where that leaves us with next steps for CS @nelsonic. What are your views on funnels, retention and cohort analysis on GA @nelsonic ?

The GA users flow also seems quite useful for tracking pathways: